Okay, I’m going to do it… after six albums as Author & Punisher, everyone who’s remotely interested in how Tristan Shone makes his music already knows, and constantly bringing it up is starting to seem like an accusation of gimmickry. It’s time, I think, to get over the methods and focus on the music.
Which makes it extremely fortunate that there’s so much on Melk En Honing (Housecore) to talk about. “Industrial” is probably one of the least reliable genre labels in music, having been used to describe anything from Throbbing Gristle to Rob Zombie, but here it works as an adjective, describing the bleak mechanised quality of Shone’s distinctive, powerful Doom. The core of A&P’s sound is built around vast, mechanised drones overlaid with precise beats and machine sounds, but the intent behind the song-writing is recognisably Doom.
Words like “bleak”, “suffocating” and “dehumanising” come easily to mind when listening to Melk En Honing – and they are certainly deserved – but those qualities are not what make Author & Punisher really special – it’s the surprising moments of hope that shine through. Extreme Metal has never had a shortage of bands who generate a hateful or negative atmosphere, but Shone finds himself in the rare group of artists such as Neurosis who infuse their music with genuine human emotion. Shone’s versatile vocals are a significant part of this, shifting from anguished howls and commanding barks to plaintive, weary clean singing as the music requires. There’s a human heart inside this cyborg, and it wants more than simply to crush.
Melk En Honing is perhaps likely to be one of the most quietly distinctive Metal albums of the year, simultaneously mechanised and surprisingly human, and is unmistakably the work of a man with a fiercely independent vision that extends far beyond his unorthodox methods and deep into the music itself.
8.0/10
RICHIE HR